Paul Romer, a world-renowned economist specializing in urbanization and development, will join the faculty of the New York University (NYU) Stern School of Business in fall 2011, the school announced last week. Romer will lead NYU Stern’s Urban System Project, a new initiative the school is launching with a $10 million gift.
Romer joins the Stern faculty after serving this year as a visiting professor. “Paul’s work on urbanization is a perfect fit for Stern,” Dean Peter Henry said in a statement. “He demonstrates what we expect our students to do: Look for the big challenges, attack them with the methods and mindset of basic science, and create value for business and society.”
Romer is recognized for his contributions to New Growth Theory, which puts new technologies at the center of economic growth. But in his more recent work, he emphasizes that technologies are only part of the story, adding that to make real progress societies must keep developing better rules to structure how people work together.
Under Romer’s leadership, NYU Stern’s Urban System Project will treat the city as a distinct unit of analysis between the nation and the business. The new initiative is especially relevant now given that more people will move into cities in this century than in all of history to date. By studying this process, scholars hope to consider alternative paths it could follow. “This kind of perspective encourages us to ask new questions,” Romer said. “What would happen if we had more start-up cities? Why do we have schools of urban planning but don’t have schools of business planning or national planning?”
Romer’s contributions regarding new cities and development were influenced by years of work with Nobel Laureate Michael Spence, a Stern faculty member, and Dean Henry. “It will be great to be able to work again at the same school with Mike and Peter,” Romer said in a statement.
A member of the faculty at the Stanford Graduate School of Business since 1996, Romer has also taught at taught at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Chicago; and the University of Rochester.
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